this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Given how "easily" the bridge fell... Why aren't ships that size required to 100% be escorted by tugs???

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (3 children)

At the risk of sounding too Clarke and Dawe, it is very rare that a ship loses power and control, and somewhere it could hit something important, and hits that thing, and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces. It's been there for 46 years, and the Port of Baltimore currently sees an average of 53 ships in and out per month, so about 3.5 big ships under the bridge per day. That's a lot of passages over the years without incident.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces.

I mean, it just got hit with a hundred thousand ton hammer. That'll do a pretty good number on most structures, I imagine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For a structure that normally has these ships pass under it every day, it sure as hell should have had bollards to protect the piers against such an impact.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

bollards

made out of what and in what shape?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

no, this is you speaking my language. we do 'risk assessments' and yeah I guess it's a case of severity*likelihood, where risk is never zero.

but, no matter what, when the risks 'line up' into a failure mode, holy shit is that failure catastrophic. crazy terrible regardless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I don't know what the likelihood of this would be, but it's definitely miniscule. I suspect you'd still need safeguards to reduce the risk to an acceptable level, but I'm not sure what exactly you can do once a boat has failed and is going to make imminent impact.

At that point all you can do is mitigate the fatalities and evacuate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

The bridge fell off

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cause then we would have to hire more people to tug all those ships in and it would be less efficient.

Not very profit margin of you to suggest that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What's the profit margin of the port with the river blocked? And of the city with a major road cut?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

The shareholders want their returns NOW!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Decades of stability pales in comparison to next quarters margins

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

The company is about to find out that a quarter of high margins pales in comparison to the lawsuits awaiting them.

[–] asret 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Politics.

"More tug jobs? Not on my watch!"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And money.

"Why do I need to pay for your safety"

[–] asret 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This'll be the real reason.

My comment was just unhelpful and inappropriate - a bad joke aimed at puritanical Americans.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I actually don't disagree with anything you said. I don't think you should feel bad (unless the comment is edited and I'm misunderstanding)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Why aren't ships that size required to 100% be escorted by tugs???

They likely were, but there are limits on how fast even a group of tugs can influence a ship many times their size/weight/mass.

The laws of physics still apply.